


In Which Emily Makes a Mistake

by Criminal_Blinds (IronicAppreciation)



Series: The Blood of the Covenant is Thicker Than the Water of the Womb [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: (at least not yet), Alternate Universe - High School, Gen, No Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 00:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16482437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronicAppreciation/pseuds/Criminal_Blinds
Summary: Math is boring.Emily tries to fix that.





	In Which Emily Makes a Mistake

Emily is bored. 

Which, in and of itself, is hardly new. 

It’s very rare that Emily  _ isn’t  _ bored in Pre-calc. For one thing: it’s  _ pre-calc _ . For another: her teacher--for some godforsaken reason--seems to feel the need to spend at least half-an-hour every day going over homework Emily hasn’t even  _ bothered doing  _ instead of actually, like, teaching. 

_ (It’s almost as though the class is catered towards students who take their responsibilities seriously instead of just presenting the same night’s sheet of homework over and over again and changing up the numbers of the problems in order to finesse their completion grade.  _

_ Bizarre.)  _

Fortunately, Emily Elizabeth Prentiss is a resourceful young woman. She’s found ways to entertain herself during the dreadfully dull eternity Mrs. Kronkri spends droning on about inequalities of polynomials  _ (or whatever-the-fuck was assigned to them the previous night) _ before, and she’s got no doubt that she’ll be able to keep it up for the rest of the year, too, tiring as it may be. 

_ (At least it’s better than actually completing the homework like  _ some _ of these losers.)  _

But today, it appears, Emily might just be shit outta luck. 

Because Dave--the senior in their class who sits right next to her in the cluster of desks arranged by the teacher in the front of the room, who has retaken the very same pre-calc class three years in a row for the sole reason that he has not giving so much as a tiny rat’s ass about pre-calc since his freshman year, and with whom Emily generally tends to share crude notes and jokes back and forth while Kronkri croons over arbitrary variables--has chosen this particular day to be home sick with the flu. 

Which leaves Emily,  _ alone,  _ in the little trio of conjoined desks right in front of Mrs. Kronkri’s stupid projector, with  _ Aaron Hotchner.  _

Hotchner, A.K.A. one of the aforementioned losers who actually completes his homework. 

Hotchner, A.K.A. probably the  _ biggest  _ of said losers because whenever he sees Emily quickly erasing the numbers from the first week’s assignment and changing them to match the most recent one’s instead, he makes a little  _ tutting  _ noise of disapproval like your fucking Grandma does when you don’t finish your food at the dinner table. 

Hotchner, A.K.A. the bane of Emily’s entire existence, because, as if dealing with Kronkri’s abhorrent monotonous babbling isn’t torment enough, she needs to deal with it while simultaneously sitting next to the one kid in school with a stick shoved perpetually up his ass, sending judgmental glances her way every time he catches her not paying attention and shushing her whenever she’s whispering something to David. 

Which,  _ fuck you,  _ Aaron Hotchner, because how do  _ you  _ know that what I’m whispering isn’t actually  _ about  _ the lesson,  _ hmmm?  _

_ (Of course--it’s not. It never is. But that’s besides the point.) _

The point is that Aaron Hotchner is the world’s most stubborn stick in the mud, and now Emily’s stuck in her most boring class of the day, with only  _ him  _ to keep her company.

The math gods must be  _ really fucking pissed  _ at her for not doing her homework.

Still, it’s only one day. She’s sure she can make do. Emily likes to think of herself as scrappy, after all, and this is just a minor setback. A small challenge. Petite. Wee. 

So, she composes herself, puts on her most charming smile as Mrs. Kronkri calls on a chubby kid in the back row who has a question about problem number 52, and turns to Aaron, batting her eyelids and beaming as brightly as she can manage given her current dilemma. 

He doesn’t so much as  _ look  _ in her direction. 

This might be harder than she thought. 

Emily doesn’t let herself get discouraged. Instead, she huffs out a pointed breath while still wearing her winning grin, pushes her dark bangs out of her face, and scooches as close to him as she can within the unforgiving confines of her fixed chair. 

She flashes him  _ The Moneymaker _ \--the name unofficially given to the smile that she has adorned infamously during instances of  _ “Why yes, Aunt Junie, I did receive the sweater; I love it so much, I wear it every day!”  _ and  _ “Those glasses look very nice on you, Dr. Ampor. What was it you were saying about my chemistry homework?” _ \--and flutters her eyelashes a little more dramatically. 

_ (While Aaron won’t admit it til much, much later, the little gesture gives off the impression of someone trying to blink a contact lens out of their eyeball without using their fingers, but hey! Desperate times, and what not.) _

_ “Hey,”  _ Emily whispers, which finally makes him avert his gaze from the projected screen in front of him, turning to glare at her with sharp, uninterested brown eyes that give her a brisk once-over, looking her up and down in a way that makes her uncharacteristically self-conscious.

_ “Yes?” _ he whispers back curtly, and the unwaveringly blase look on his face almost makes Emily want to give up the act and retreat before it’s too late, shameful like a puppy with its tail tucked between its legs.

But her pride won’t let her do that.

_ “What did you get for number 47?”  _ she asks, coming quickly and worrisomely to the realization that she doesn’t actually have a plan, and none of her usual tricks  _ (pitched, innocent voice; perky posture; arms positioned juuust right so that they frame her boobs in a way that’s noticeable without being obvious)  _ are working on this guy.

Aaron narrows his eyes at her. 

_ “You didn’t do the homework.” _

Emily wants to scream. 

_ (But she doesn’t.) _

_ “Yeah, but  _ you  _ did,”  _ she eyes his homework notebook laid out on the desk before him, neat, slanted handwriting scrawled over pages and pages of graph paper, emphasizing her point.  _ “So, what did you get for number 47?” _

He is silent for a few moments. Then, without looking at his notebook, he replies,

_ “Number 47 wasn’t part of the assignment.” _

_ “Oh.”  _ Emily doesn’t know what to say after that. It seems like all her charismatic manipulation skills have disintegrated after less than a minute under the duress of this guy’s leer, and she’s about to admit defeat, turn back to her own incorrect homework assignment, maybe change her name and move to a different country while she’s at it, when--

_ “Why do you want to know, anyway?” _

She blinks, turning to look back at him so fast, it nearly gives her whiplash.

_ “Huh?” _

Aaron clears his throat softly, gaze dipping briefly to his shoes before meeting hers once more.

_ “Why do you want to know about number 47?” _

Emily opens and closes her mouth uselessly a few times before finding her words.

_ “I don’t, really,”  _ she admits with a bashful half-shrug,  _ “I’m just bored. I wanted someone to talk to, and--” _

_ “And Dave’s not here,”  _ Aaron finishes for her, mostly talking to himself at this point, although, if Emily didn’t know better, she’d swear she heard a hint of something akin to _ disappointment _ lace his voice for a moment there, break through his stoic exterior for a fraction of a second.

_ (Whatever it is, it’s gone before she has the opportunity to register it.) _

She opens her mouth to say something else--anything else--before the weird blip of silence that’s fallen between their seemingly inconsequential exchange becomes too long to recover from, when she’s interrupted by the barking of her teacher. 

Even if the math gods aren’t angry with her, Mrs. Kronkri sure is.

“Aaron! Emily!” 

Emily turns to look at her, and she really is  _ seething.  _ It’s a weird expression to see on such a passive, forgettable face. She must’ve really been looking forward to explaining those polynomial inequalities. 

“Detention,” she sneers as the rest of the students crane their necks to see whose are about to be chopped right through, “and if you interrupt me again, I’ll be calling your parents.” 

Emily resists the urge to scoff. It’s hardly the first time the parental threat has come up, and honestly, if any of these underpaid, overworked asshats can find a way to get through to her parents and make them give a damn about her for once,  _ no one  _ will be more surprised and grateful than she. 

Nevertheless, she shuts up after the woman’s outburst, and keeps focused--as best she can, at least--on whatever’s happening on the screen. 

It keeps her from noticing the boy to her right bristle to a stiff stillness beside her and stop moving altogether for a good thirty seconds before resuming a tense, labored breathing, as if something about what just happened is physically obstructing his lungs. 

It never occurs to her that other kids aren’t so used to getting into trouble. 

It never occurs to her that other kids have to deal with the consequences of their actions.

It never occurs to her that maybe there’s a  _ reason  _ why Aaron Hotchner is such a loser and always does his homework. 

It never occurs to her.

Until she meets him again in detention after school.

And everything changes.

**Author's Note:**

> Criticisms? Compliments? COMMENT! (pls!!!)


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